What It's About

TRIBEWORK is about consuming the process of life, the journey, together.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Love’s Great Paradox

Love does
fill,

And love
will empty,

For love
we spill,

And love makes us envy.

It brings
out our best,

And
certainly our worst,

It can be
divine rest,

Or hell disbursed.

***

The ‘Bright Star’ That Is Love

In the Jane Campion directed Bright Star (2009), depicting early 19th
century poet John Keats’ life, his beloved, Fanny Brawn, exemplifies the
horribly bipolar nature of love. From depths of hellish disdain, where life is
not simply an empty room, but by torture, the heart aflame in vestiges of pain,
she glides upward to existential heaven, but then back again, and back and
forth she vacillates. Love, here, has no middle ground.

We cannot control love. If she
were a person, she’d appear to be despicably sadistic. If love were a man, he’d
appear to be nonchalantly uncaring. But on a different day love would be better
than life, for love is God’s, and blessing isn’t the half of it as far as our
feeling is concerned.

Love is a bright star. It has
power remarkably mysterious, and if we would live life, giving ourselves over
to risk, we would need to climb into bed with love. We would need to commit.
Love’s power compels us to choose.

Love asks us, “Do we care?”

And if we care, and usually we do,
we stand to be both blessed and burned by love. The way of commitment knows no
middle ground.

This bright star called love
insists we get in, boots and all. There’s no transformation without pain. We
get none of love’s benefits without sowing ourselves into the dough of life.

Treading Softly On Hard Realities

One of the great confusions of the
faith-life is in the misplaced stoicism that suggests ‘resilience’ is the
be-all-and-end-all. It doesn’t leave much hope for those hurt by love, or those
timidly treading, wanting to enter in, but genuinely scared that they don’t
have what it takes.

Love may be a hard reality in the
way it deals with us at times, but just as much it makes a generous allowance
for softly-softly approaches for us to draw near. Love is a great and
compassionate teacher if only we can connect with the love of God sourced deep
within us.

Deep within us we care for
ourselves. God is intimately part of us in this.

Whilst love can be brutal, it is
underpinned by a softness available to anyone who draws openly near. Love can
heal our hurts, but only when we open ourselves up in truth. That takes much
courage, and it’s the journey with no clear destination.

***

Romantic love both blesses and
burns. It takes us to dizzying heights and abysmal depths. It is paradoxical.
But the secret of love is in hope for future blessing. Love teaches us when it
burns, if we’re open to learning; to risk again, when we’re ready. Love can
heal our hurts, but only when we open ourselves up in truth, at our time and at
our pace.